I would expand upon the Australian entry to include a few other items and explain a bit more about the things listed.

There's the DIM SIM, not to be confused with Dim Sum, as where Sum is a meal of steamed and fried treats the DIM SIM is an entirely bodged together Aussie take on a pork and pastry dumpling.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dim_sim

They are MONSTROUSLY bad for you but quite fabulous.

I'd recommend the ones from South Melbourne Market, just walk around the outside until you see a big queue...that's it. And get the fried one, not the steamed on.

Other than that is the Australian OBSESSION with the Meat pie.

They tend not to ellucidate upon what the meat is and in the past it has been discovered to be a mix of cow camel rabbit and pretty much road kill.

I prefer a couple of FOUR'n'TWENTY pies with a big slop of Dead 'Orse

Here is one of THE most Aussie views in the whole continent.

A FnT pie being eaten at the FOOTY (looks Like Saint Kilda to me).

Then there is the horror that is the CHIKO roll.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiko_roll

I can't stand the things but some folks swear by em, indeed live and die by them.

Other than that....Camel Jerky.

The thing about Oz is it's a nation made of folks from everywhere, who become true blue dinky di Aussies in a single generation, so most Aussies think of Nasi Goreng, Souvlaki, Thai red Curry, Dim Sum,Sushi,gyros, curry, burgers and sausages (snags) as being fundamentally Australian.

Which I really like about them.

Is it better to buy the worst house in a good neighbourhood,or the best house in a worse neighbourhood?

I can't help but remember that where I am from in Glasgow was at one point seen as fit only to be demolished but now commands some seriously FAT prices.

Brutalist Architecture is much like Techno music.

Some can work within the field and create genuinely beautiful innovative things using the strengths and limitations of the medium.

But most everyone else is using the medium to disguise their mediocrity with ill used technology that abrades peoples soul.

The reason that Elvis never toured the world was that his manager Tom Parker wouldn't let Elvis out of his sight for fear of him being tempted away by other managers.

Tom couldn't go with him because Tom was a Dutch illegal immigrant to the US so couldn't get a passport.

It is absurd to blame the troubles on the workers.

It is managements fault.

They failed to manage.

That is why they get paid the fat money, not to whine and bitch and blame the employees.

If you are management...MANAGE THE COMPANY.

If you don't like the Unions then manage the situation, make them see that absenteeism will result in firings.
Manage your product, if you are trying to sell a car you do not get to blame the guy with the wrench putting wheels on all day, he didn't design it, nor did he do the consumer research nor the market place forecasting.

It is managements fault, they failed to manage any aspect of their business and awarded themselves a series of unearned and grossly out od scale pay increases.

Clarkson was and will for ever remain an unmitigated ARSE.

He is so blinkered to the car that he doesn't see that motorcycles don't kill people cars kill people, be they motor cyclist cyclist pedestrian skate boarder whatever.

The US is more than ten years in arrears in it's payments.

Still likes to start wars via the UN though.

When will someone post a "The UN and the Jews are going to invade Missouri" style lunacy.

Easy

Is that Elizabeth Street in the CBD?

The Cat in the Natorama pic looks like my Uncle John in Dublin.

he was hit in the eye as a tween and one eye changed colour in that quite remarkable way.

I love Siamese cats as they are, if thourough bred, Cross eyed.

It's a a very sweet attribute.

Larfin

glad you liked

And I stand corrected.

man I have to get back to Melbourne.

Overpowering need to sit under the palm trees at Greasy Joes in Saint Kilda and sink a few Coopers Red.

I don't think it is meant to attract tourists from overseas, as it is an interstate advertising campaign to goad folks from the southern sates of Victoria And New South Wales to go "Troppo" in Queensland.

I absolutely adore Melbourne, lived there for 7 years and fell in love with the place.

It has seasons, sometimes al in one day, QLD has climate.... all of it tropical armpit.

Actually the advert is VERY Queensland, they have a reputation for being a bit crass up there.

Also have a rep for not liking anyone not from QLD.

As the old joke goes, The QueenslandPremier has announced that they are going to build a wall around the state to keep the pooftas and foriegners out. All the remaining states in the Commonwealth have volunteeered to help.

Go Go Uncle Joe (Bjejke Petersen, super right wing ex premier of QLD)

JB

My only point here is that these people are not geniuses.

That is all.

I did state that they have remarkable abilities and facilities.

And you are quite right they do have a place in finding out how the mind works.

But that work will be done ON people like this, not BY people like this.

As they are ...NOT geniuses.

To engage in an argument where the only stated point is that these people are in no way geniuses, and then to try and switch that topic for one that you like better after the event is not an argument.

Some fine sentiments about how they can help us understand the wonders of the mind or some such is to atempt to derail an argument.

You might as well hold up a puppy and invite people to go Awww and pat it's head.

As it has nothing to do with the matter in hand but serves to make you look like a NICE GUY.

see he's a good guy!...he's gotta be right, he has a Puppy.

Nobody with a puppy could be a bad guy.

Yes my point is not nice, these people are broken to a point where they neeed an enormous amount of care, and my saying that in no way changes their situations or ameliorates the predicaments of their families or care workers. And I am all infavour for these people to be cared for an indeed trwasured, but the matter of them being Whizz bang super geniuses is facile wrong headed and self serving. It makes lazy thinkers happy to think that they all have their 90 min after school sub rainman special and have basicallyy happy lives thinking their big thoughts.

Things are just not that nice in the real world. And telling these poor souls what totally special snow flakes they are really does nothing beyond salve a little twinge of discomfort in the veiwer not the veiwed.

they don't care.

JB

Well, fine, you are welcome to critisice me for double spacing, but I do it for legibility. My own not yours so much.

I have always typed in a double space manner, and it's not like by doing so I use all the paper.

I don't think i like to dominate the comments section, and if you feel that double spacing succesfully does so then that speaks volumes about how you fell about your own arguments.

Man defeated in debate by double spacing.

BUt i digress.

I didn't say all autistic people were useless, I said that a lot of them are. They can not apply themselves to anything, they are without use.

It is not meant as a pejorative, but a simple statement.

And Asperger's is some times called functional autism, but it's not really autism, on a sliding scale it is to autism what losing a hand is to quadraplegic paralysis.

Yes, i take your point about the fish and Kant and all.

The thing of it is that the fish and the savants that are seeing in umnkown colours even if they are, means nothing.

Information is not information unless it is shared, or can be shared.

And as even in a best case scenario that all these savants live lives filled with wonderful information that only they can perceive....so what?

It is useless.

Genius pivots on processign and using information.

There is no use, ipso facto pepto bismol it is use-less.

not genius.

Again , sorry for double spacing, I do it because my eye sight isn't that great and single spacing looks like noise.

@Alex, no tyou are totally correct mate. I attributed Genius in quotation marks and it was in no way what you said.

You have my total and unstinting apology.

Normally I try to be more thorough about such things.

You have my sincere apology. Shall endeavour to be be better in future.

@Violet,

as much as I can see your intent, it actually says nothing.

These people are nowhere in the "constellation" of genius.

They are quite extraordinary, and they cause quite nice feelings in people, hell even in me.

But that does not mean genius.

No more than Google is a genius.

It is an apparatus to retrieve or access information, it in no way interprets information.

Kim Peek can retrieve any item of info he's read in his life.

But he can in no way understand the information beyond it's set level of information.

JFK was assasinated in....

The exact location time and weather bureau information is nothing to him beyond stats and repetition..

It is regurgitation, it is not digestion.

He could no more interpret this than he could being told that a squirel jumped onto a power transformer, or that Pringles have a new flavour.

It is all just information.

Genius is the facility to take information and interpret it in absolutely new ways.

To see that which can exist between information.

Information processing at it's basics is the capacity to take thesis antithesis and make a synthesis.

That is waht any of us do in any day.

You want Mexican, Polx wants Indian but Violet is ok with either.

So waht do we eat?

Ok that is overly simlified, but this would Stymie these people.

Alright enough from me.

Suffice to say, genius is a very different thing.

It may please you or salve your feelings to attributee this to them but that has so much more to do with your world view than anything to do with these people.

Also, I don't care beyond what I say, as my indifference to these savants is immaterial, they don't care that they are not genuiuses or functional people, omnly you have made an emotional investment in their place in the constellation of genius.

quite quite pointlessly.

Yours Sincerely from the ninty-ninth percentile.

(which means as little as savantism incidentally.)

hee hee my typing is bloody awful.